Established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1983, the California Gulch Superfund Site encompasses about eighteen square miles in central Lake County, including the city of Leadville. One of the nation’s first Superfund sites, it was…

Located about two miles west of Nederland in western Boulder County, the Cardinal Mill processed gold, silver, and tungsten ore from its parent mine, the Boulder County Tunnel, as well as other local mines between 1902 and 1942. The Cardinal Mill was an…

Colorado, “the Centennial State,” was the thirty-eighth state to enter the Union on August 1, 1876. Its diverse geography encompasses 104,094 square miles of the American West and includes swathes of the Great Plains, southern Rocky Mountains, and the…

The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to…

The San Juan Mountains are the largest mountain range by area in the Centennial State, spanning thirteen counties in southwestern Colorado. In addition to being the home of the Ute Indians for hundreds of years, the mountains intrigued Spaniards, lured…

Founded in 1893, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was one of the largest and most active labor unions in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West. The union was involved in some of the most important labor disputes in Colorado…